Balloon Plates

Blue & yellow is such a classic combination, and with good reason. Evocative of Provence, it conjures up visions of summer – blue skies, warm sunshine, gentle breezes…

And what better way to enjoy all that than drifting along in a hot-air balloon!

This series of plates is from Williams Sonoma, and is oddly called “Montgolfiere”. Intrigued, I did some research and discovered it is named after two brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, inventors of the Montgolfière-style hot air balloon. Their first experiments lifted a balloon into the sky in 1782. They were the twelfth and fifteenth children out of sixteen, and the family were paper manufacturers. I don’t quite see the connection to ballooning, but it may have been a matter of necessity being the mother of invention. Can you imagine how exciting (and terrifying) those first experiments must have been?

There are four salad plates in the series.

Dinner Plate

Green Salad Plate

Blue & Green Salad Plate

Yellow Salad Plate

Purple & Red Salad Plate

The series is discontinued, and only the salad plates are available. from Replacements.com. I quite like the dinner plate, but was unable to procure any, so styled the plates with the blue dinner plate from the Pistoulet pattern by Pfaltzgraff (very French – seemed appropriate!)

The blue water goblets are from Pier 1, a million years ago, and the placemats are also Pier 1, but more recent. The cutlery is a pattern from Williams Sonoma, long discontinued. The napkins are a blue & white checked set of eight I’ve had for years.

A bright, sunny table to help tide us over while we await warmer days.